Boogyman
09-30-2006, 10:45
What the die-hard Bush supporters are gonna say about this...
"It's old news"
"Woodward is a liar"
"Woodward is unpatriotic"
"He's just trying to sell books"
"This hurts America"
"It's just election-time smear tactics"
Or the all-time favorite:
"Everything is Clinton's fault"
Book says aide urged Bush to fire Rumsfeld
Woodward depicts feud between White House, military over Iraq policy
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s job security was questioned twice by former White House chief of staff Andrew Card, a new book says.
By William Hamilton
Updated: 2 hours, 35 minutes ago
Former White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. on two occasions tried and failed to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to a new book by Bob Woodward that depicts senior officials of the Bush administration as unable to face the consequences of their policy in Iraq.
Card made his first attempt after Bush was reelected in November 2004, arguing that the administration needed a fresh start and recommending that Bush replace Rumsfeld with former secretary of state James A. Baker III. Woodward writes that Bush considered the move but was persuaded by Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, that it would be seen as an expression of doubt about the course of the war and would expose Bush to criticism.
Card tried again around Thanksgiving 2005, this time with the support of first lady Laura Bush, who, according to Woodward, felt that Rumsfeld's overbearing manner was damaging to her husband. Bush refused for a second time, and Card left the administration in March, convinced that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam and that history would record that no senior administration officials had raised their voices in opposition to the conduct of the war.
The book is the third that Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, has written on the Bush administration since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The first two were attacked by critics of the administration as depicting the president in a heroic light. But the new book's title, "State of Denial," conveys the different picture that Woodward paints of the administration since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Excerpts of the book will be published in the Sunday and Monday editions of The Post.
Internal, public statements at odds
Woodward writes that there has been a vast difference between what the White House and the Pentagon knew about the situation in Iraq and what they have been saying publicly. In memos, reports and internal debates, administration officials have voiced their concerns about the conduct of the war, even while Bush and Cabinet members such as Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have insisted that the war was going well.
In May, Woodward writes, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence estimate predicting that violence in Iraq will not only continue for the rest of this year but also increase in 2007.
"Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year," said the report, which was distributed to the White House, the State Department and intelligence agencies.
The report presented a similarly bleak assessment of oil production, electricity generation and the political situation in Iraq.
"Threats of Shia ascendancy could harden and expand Shia militant opposition and increase calls for coalition withdrawal," the report said.
Several warnings on Iraq
Woodward writes that Rice and Rumsfeld have been warned repeatedly about the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
Returning from his assignment as the first head of the Iraq postwar planning office, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner told Rumsfeld on June 18, 2003, that the United States had made "three tragic mistakes" in Iraq.
The first two, he said, were the orders his successor, L. Paul Bremer, had given banning members of the Baath Party from government jobs and disbanding the Iraqi military. The third was Bremer's dismissal of an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term.
"There's still time to rectify this," Garner said. "There's still time to turn it around."
But Rumsfeld dismissed the idea, according to Woodward. "We're not going to go back," Rumsfeld said.
Bush
President Bush is portrayed as being stubbornly immune to warnings that things might not be going well in Iraq. According to published reports, Woodward describes Bush as “increasingly removed from reality.”
Other disclosures:
• In September 2003, Bush is reported as having ignored a warning from Robert Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, that tens of thousands more U.S. troops were needed to subdue the insurgency.
• In November 2003, Bush is quoted as having said: “I don’t want anyone in the Cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”
• Bush regularly talks with Vietnam-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The problem, Woodward said on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” is that “Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will.”
A year later, Rumsfeld received even more blunt criticism from Steve Herbits, a longtime friend who, according to Woodward, has served as an informal adviser to Rumsfeld since he became defense secretary. In a seven-page memo in July 2004 titled "Summary of Post-Iraq Planning and Execution Problems," Herbits listed a series of questions for Rumsfeld:
"Who made the decision and why didn't we reconstitute the Iraqi Army?"
"Did no one realize we were going to need Iraqi security forces?"
"Did no one anticipate the importance of stabilization and how best to achieve it?"
"Why was the de-Baathification so wide and deep?"
He then described "Rumsfeld's style of operation," which he said was the "Haldeman model, arrogant," referring to President Richard M. Nixon's White House chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman. "Indecisive, contrary to popular image. Would not accept that some people in some areas were smarter than he. . . . Trusts very few people. Very, very cautious. Rubber glove syndrome -- a tendency not to leave his fingerprints on decisions."
Woodward does not say how Rumsfeld responded.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15068379/
"It's old news"
"Woodward is a liar"
"Woodward is unpatriotic"
"He's just trying to sell books"
"This hurts America"
"It's just election-time smear tactics"
Or the all-time favorite:
"Everything is Clinton's fault"
Book says aide urged Bush to fire Rumsfeld
Woodward depicts feud between White House, military over Iraq policy
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s job security was questioned twice by former White House chief of staff Andrew Card, a new book says.
By William Hamilton
Updated: 2 hours, 35 minutes ago
Former White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. on two occasions tried and failed to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to a new book by Bob Woodward that depicts senior officials of the Bush administration as unable to face the consequences of their policy in Iraq.
Card made his first attempt after Bush was reelected in November 2004, arguing that the administration needed a fresh start and recommending that Bush replace Rumsfeld with former secretary of state James A. Baker III. Woodward writes that Bush considered the move but was persuaded by Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, that it would be seen as an expression of doubt about the course of the war and would expose Bush to criticism.
Card tried again around Thanksgiving 2005, this time with the support of first lady Laura Bush, who, according to Woodward, felt that Rumsfeld's overbearing manner was damaging to her husband. Bush refused for a second time, and Card left the administration in March, convinced that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam and that history would record that no senior administration officials had raised their voices in opposition to the conduct of the war.
The book is the third that Woodward, an assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, has written on the Bush administration since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The first two were attacked by critics of the administration as depicting the president in a heroic light. But the new book's title, "State of Denial," conveys the different picture that Woodward paints of the administration since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Excerpts of the book will be published in the Sunday and Monday editions of The Post.
Internal, public statements at odds
Woodward writes that there has been a vast difference between what the White House and the Pentagon knew about the situation in Iraq and what they have been saying publicly. In memos, reports and internal debates, administration officials have voiced their concerns about the conduct of the war, even while Bush and Cabinet members such as Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have insisted that the war was going well.
In May, Woodward writes, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence estimate predicting that violence in Iraq will not only continue for the rest of this year but also increase in 2007.
"Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year," said the report, which was distributed to the White House, the State Department and intelligence agencies.
The report presented a similarly bleak assessment of oil production, electricity generation and the political situation in Iraq.
"Threats of Shia ascendancy could harden and expand Shia militant opposition and increase calls for coalition withdrawal," the report said.
Several warnings on Iraq
Woodward writes that Rice and Rumsfeld have been warned repeatedly about the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
Returning from his assignment as the first head of the Iraq postwar planning office, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner told Rumsfeld on June 18, 2003, that the United States had made "three tragic mistakes" in Iraq.
The first two, he said, were the orders his successor, L. Paul Bremer, had given banning members of the Baath Party from government jobs and disbanding the Iraqi military. The third was Bremer's dismissal of an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term.
"There's still time to rectify this," Garner said. "There's still time to turn it around."
But Rumsfeld dismissed the idea, according to Woodward. "We're not going to go back," Rumsfeld said.
Bush
President Bush is portrayed as being stubbornly immune to warnings that things might not be going well in Iraq. According to published reports, Woodward describes Bush as “increasingly removed from reality.”
Other disclosures:
• In September 2003, Bush is reported as having ignored a warning from Robert Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, that tens of thousands more U.S. troops were needed to subdue the insurgency.
• In November 2003, Bush is quoted as having said: “I don’t want anyone in the Cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don’t think we are there yet.”
• Bush regularly talks with Vietnam-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The problem, Woodward said on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” is that “Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again because, in his view, the problem in Vietnam was we lost our will.”
A year later, Rumsfeld received even more blunt criticism from Steve Herbits, a longtime friend who, according to Woodward, has served as an informal adviser to Rumsfeld since he became defense secretary. In a seven-page memo in July 2004 titled "Summary of Post-Iraq Planning and Execution Problems," Herbits listed a series of questions for Rumsfeld:
"Who made the decision and why didn't we reconstitute the Iraqi Army?"
"Did no one realize we were going to need Iraqi security forces?"
"Did no one anticipate the importance of stabilization and how best to achieve it?"
"Why was the de-Baathification so wide and deep?"
He then described "Rumsfeld's style of operation," which he said was the "Haldeman model, arrogant," referring to President Richard M. Nixon's White House chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman. "Indecisive, contrary to popular image. Would not accept that some people in some areas were smarter than he. . . . Trusts very few people. Very, very cautious. Rubber glove syndrome -- a tendency not to leave his fingerprints on decisions."
Woodward does not say how Rumsfeld responded.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15068379/